701.6111/742
Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Phillips) of a Conversation With the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs (Litvinov)
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I said that the President and Mr. Norman Davis had indicated to me briefly the nature of Mr. Litvinov’s views regarding disarmament, [Page 464] but that I would be glad to have him say anything that was on his mind on this subject. He launched forth at considerable length on the hopelessness of the Geneva Disarmament Conference; there could be no satisfactory European solution, he said, because Europe was too closely tied to Russia and Russia was too closely tied to Japan; Poland could not disarm because of Russia, Russia could not disarm because of Japan and, therefore, any attempt at European disarmament was impossible at the present time. This led the conversation to the Far East and Mr. Litvinov talked frankly about Soviet relations with the Japanese; he gave me a brief historical survey of the Chinese Eastern Railway situation, concluding with the difficulties which had arisen over the proposed sale of the railway to Japan; he said that as Manchuria was Japanese territory in fact, the railway was no longer of any use to Russia and, in addition, the Japanese were building competing lines to it; the Japanese, however, had taken the position that they could get the railway for nothing and had proceeded to displace the Russian railway officials, in order to illustrate to Moscow that already control of the railway had passed to Japan; he referred to the tension which now existed on the border; fortunately, he said, the Russians had been concentrating along the border for over a year and their forces, together with the fortifications which they had erected, were sufficient to hold the Japanese in check for the time being; he thought that if war broke out the Russians would have the first advantage. Mr. Litvinov referred to the designs of the War Party headed by General Araki to create an Asiatic empire which would dominate all of China; he also mentioned the fact that over a period of months France had encouraged the Japanese in their ambitions (though he did not indicate that this was the present attitude of France).
Mr. Litvinov then mentioned the various pacts of nonaggression which he had concluded with the neighboring states to the west and his twice-made attempt to conclude a similar pact with Japan; he expressed the thought that the United States might be willing to conclude a nonaggression pact with Russia co-incident with certain other pacts covering the Far East—United States-Russia; United States-Japan; Japan-Russia; Japan-China. I reminded him that we already had, under the Kellogg Pact, similar engagements with those countries. Mr. Litvinov replied that the Kellogg Pact was no longer in existence in the Far East, since Japan had broken it and that, any way, individual pacts between nations gave a greater sense of security than a world-wide pact including all nations. I told him that his suggestion was a very interesting one and that, of course, [Page 465] we should give it careful study. I did not, however, indicate any enthusiasm for it or any certainty that we could go along with him in his proposal.
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